


The Proxy

by cgf_kat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Romance, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Lance is a clone, Romance, Whump, plangst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2019-12-07 07:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18231554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgf_kat/pseuds/cgf_kat
Summary: “Pidge?” Lance manages, between gasps. She catches him as he hunches against her shoulder, curling in on himself with a groan. The metal bracelet on his wrist blinks orange as his fingers tangle in her sleeve, while the soft indicator lights on her own glow a soft green.“What are you doing here?” he mumbles. “You...you shouldn't be here.”“I…” For a moment all Pidge can do is hold him. Her chest is tight as she clutches him close, as if she could change their world by stroking his sweat-damp hair.“I need to know what they’re doing to you. To...to all of you.”***When Pidge takes a job at the Proxy Facility, she isn't planning to fall in love with one.In a world where humans transfer their pain to a genetically engineered race of clones that are seen as less than people, Lance and Pidge are caught up in a web of secrets that, if brought to light, might spark change.





	1. Chapter 1

  
_Upon the implementation of the Proxy program nearly two centuries ago, Proxies quickly developed an extraordinarily human-like social framework. This is likely due to learned behavior and the human basis of their genetic structure. Nevertheless, it has been found that a Proxy’s lifespan can be considerably expanded by allowing the individuals to care for each other and engage in social interaction, much like any great ape._

_Proxy Facility Employment Orientation Pamphlet - c. 2415_

 

Pidge squeezes against a wall to stay out of sight of the swinging camera lens, silently pressing a button on the small tablet in her hand to disrupt the signal just long enough to dart across the corridor. Her disruption gives her time to scan a hacked card against the lock on one of the many doors placed along the ever-curving hallway— a ring around this floor of the cylindrical Proxy Facility tower.

The small bedroom on the other side of the door is comfortably cool and dim, a lamp on the desk and a quietly droning entertainment screen the only light.

It would be cozy if the soft light and screen programming weren’t punctuated by distressed gasps coming from the form huddled in the bed.

And if Pidge didn’t know this room was a prison.

“What…?” The form in the bed is moving, sitting up slowly as she secures the door behind her and hurries to the bedside. Blue eyes focus on her in the low light, hazy with pain.

“It’s okay, It’s just me.”

“Pidge?” Lance manages, between gasps. She catches him as he hunches against her shoulder, curling in on himself with a groan. The metal bracelet on his wrist blinks orange as his fingers tangle in her sleeve, while the soft indicator lights on her own glow a soft green.

“What are you doing here?” he mumbles. “You...you shouldn't be here.”

“I…” For a moment all Pidge can do is hold him. Her chest is tight as she clutches him close, as if she could change their world by stroking his sweat-damp hair.

“I need to know what they’re doing to you. To...to all of you.”

Lance shifts at that, pulling back to look at her blearily. “What...what are you talking about?”

She swallows as she fishes a small device from her pocket and attaches it to a port in her tablet. “I need to feel it. I need to know. I think I’ve figured out a way to switch the signals from our bracelets temporarily—”

Trembling hands close over hers. “What? Are you crazy?” When Pidge finds his face again, Lance’s eyebrows have shot up. His eyes are clearer now. “I-I can’t let you—!”

“Please!” she pleads. She tugs a hand free to rest it against his cheek. To make him look at her. So he knows how much this means to her. “I've spent an entire life not knowing what real pain is...because people like you exist. I need to know the truth—all of it.”

***

_Eight Months Ago_

“It’s one of the best jobs you can get,” Matt told her. “Especially right out of school. It’s the government so, you know...red tape, yeah, but benefits! If I weren’t on a ship that’d have been my next choice. Their computer systems are supposed to be even better than the ones in the deep space ships. I guess they’d have to be, to process that many signals.”

Pidge isn’t so sure it’s the ‘best’ job, but she isn’t sure about much other than the fact that she’s much more fond of computers than most people, as a general rule. So a job where she can spend most of her time behind closed doors in a computer bay filled with Altean magic technology systems? In a high-security facility with a bunch of not-really-people she still won’t see much of anyway?

Sure. Why not.

But her father tells her, if she’s going to do it, to be careful. And she isn’t sure why.

“You should listen to your father,” Allura tells her, over coffee before her first day. “Or better yet, find a different position. I wouldn’t want to be within miles of that awful place.”

“Why?” Her brow furrows, and Pidge doesn’t want to admit she already has a strange feeling about it too.

Allura glances over her shoulder as if to be sure no one is listening, even though they’re in a booth in a corner, hidden from most eyes, and the cafe is noisy anyway. She still leans close to cover the metal bracelet on Pidge’s wrist with her hands; the same bracelet every person in the cafe wears some variation of, save for Allura herself. Her wrists have always been conspicuously bare, as long as Pidge has known her.

“Pidge...do you really understand what these are? What they do?” she whispers.

Pidge raises an eyebrow. “Everyone does…”

Allura lets out a breath, tense but patient. “I realize you’ve grown up in a society where transferring your pain to another living being that did not ask for it has been seen as ‘normal’ for quite a good many deca-phoebs, but has it really never felt...wrong, to you?”

Something twinges in her chest, and Pidge swallows. “But your people are the ones who gave us the technology. You still use it too.”

“Not all of us,” Allura says. “Your government doesn’t want that particular news to get through to Earth, but there are growing protests on Altea.” She takes Pidge’s hands and squeezes them tightly. “The entire situation is extremely volatile. Please...I won’t think less of you if you go in there, but if you do...just be careful.”

Now two people have basically told her to watch her back, and Pidge isn’t entirely sure what to make of that.

***

Pidge has her own channels, and after a nearly all-night deep research binge, she’s tired but more informed. And tired is something she can deal with.

Being uninformed is not.

The Proxy Facility tower looms over her as she scans her newly minted badge at the complex’s gate, and inside she goes through three other layers of security just to get to the offices where she’s meant to work. She’s been assigned to the team that maintains the magic-infused computer systems that keep the Proxy sensor network connected—the computers that somehow turn any discomfort or pain over a certain level from anyone in the city, anyone wearing a bracelet, into signals that can be transferred to the Proxies.

Those signals can’t be erased entirely. Somehow Altean alchemy doesn’t allow for that. But the signals can be conveyed. And because the Proxies are genetically engineered clones, they aren’t seen as people. They aren’t meant to be people, and other than Allura no one else Pidge has ever known has questioned it.

But she spent much of the night in deeply-hidden backchannel chatter—so hidden even she never would have found it if she hadn’t gone looking—and Allura was right. The real conversation is a mess out there.

Maybe she should feel more shaken over that than she is, but instead, the familiar feeling of needing to KNOW is crowding out everything else.  
She has to know the truth.

***

_As with any other domesticated creature, Proxies respond positively to being treated well and taken seriously. As such, Proxy children are raised and educated by human caretakers and teachers, and adult individuals allowed to continue to socialize with people during their Carer rotations. New employees should feel free to interact with Proxies on breaks from Carer duty in public spaces in the facility, as long as the difference between human beings and Proxy individuals is kept carefully in mind._

_Proxy Facility Employment Orientation Pamphlet - c. 2415_

 

The orientation literature goes on to provide conversation starters that often ‘work well to interest Proxies’ in case one is curious but doesn’t know where to start, but Pidge can’t help raising an eyebrow at the suggestions.

Surely if Proxies are intelligent enough to be trained to care for each other, asking their favorite food or color is a little condescending.

Then again, she’s never been the greatest at starting conversations with normal people, either, so what does she know?

“You could just hold out a hand and let us sniff it.”

Pidge jumps at the voice over her shoulder, far too close to her ear. “Ah!” She hastily closes the document open on her tablet, twisting to find a smirking male Proxy over her shoulder. “Excuse me?”

Hunk—the one friend Pidge has managed to make here at work in the week she’s been here—pipes up from across the small round picnic table. “Lance! Stop scaring the new kids.” But he’s smiling, and she has a feeling they know each other well.

A laugh as the Proxy takes the empty curved seat between them. The logo on the chest of his otherwise nondescript gray scrubs denote him as a Carer, and blue eyes catch the sunlight before he ducks under the awning over the table to sit.

“She was reading the orientation stuff! Out here in the courtyard. Half filled with Proxies.” A placating spread of his hands. “She was asking for it, Hunk.”

“Who—what—who are you?” Pidge stammers, cheeks burning.

He flashes a grin, but now that he’s out of the glare of the sunlight she can distinguish the dark circles under his eyes. She can also tell that his lithe frame is almost painfully thin. “L32, at your service, ma’am. But my friends call me Lance.”

Hunk nudges his arm—not quite a punch. “Good to see you outside again, buddy.”

Lance, as he’s apparently known, rubs at his eyes as he slumps over the table. “This wood is warm...quiznak did I miss the sun.”

“You okay, man?” Hunk asks.

“Mm...yeah. Rotation hangover.” He buries his face in his arms on the table and lets out a breath.

The rotations—the two main groupings of adult Proxies—switched places a week ago, the same way they do every six months. Hunk told her it was happening when she started, and that it would be about a week before she met any of the Proxies because they all stayed inside for the week of the switchover. Those that were Carers are now on Proxy duty, and those that were before are now on Carer rotation.

“Why are only those on Carer rotation allowed outside?” Pidge asks. Not to mention the week when none of them were...

A sudden, harsh laugh from Lance makes her jump; he doesn’t even answer.

Across the table, Hunk is wincing. “He’ll lighten up in a few days.”

Lance snorts and drags his head up. “What? I’m light! I’m happy. There’s sun, it’s warm, you’ve got a cute new friend…”

He smiles at her again, something sparking even in his tired eyes, and Pidge finds her cheeks burning for an entirely different reason.

She’s relatively sure that bit isn’t exactly the type of socialization the handbook would find appropriate, but she can’t bring herself to care.

***

Lance often eats lunch with her and Hunk, but sometimes he doesn’t seem to be outside at all. Whenever he is, there seem to be very few other Proxies he interacts with.

“Where do you go?” Pidge asks. Hunk is stuck in the office babysitting a troublesome diagnostic, and she and Lance have sat in a comfortable silence until now. They’ve never been alone before—not that they’re really “alone” out here, just that no one else has joined them at their usual table—but it doesn’t seem strange.

“Hm?” Lance blinks up at her. “When?”

“When you’re not out here.”

“Oh.” In the month or so since she met him, the circles under his eyes have long since disappeared, and he’s quickly filled out to a healthy weight. Hunk not being here right now doesn’t help her NOT notice these things all over again as he smiles at her.

“Most of my friends are in the other rotation,” he says. “I eat inside with them a lot, but sometimes a guy just needs his fresh air.”

“So I’ve heard,” Pidge says. “I could do without it.”

“Oh come on; it’s not that bad. Why do you eat out here then?”

She shrugs. “Hunk likes it, and I don’t really have anyone else to talk to. Not that that usually matters—I’m usually fine on my own—but like you,” she says, pointing an empty utensil for emphasis, “apparently sometimes need sun, I, at times, do need my social interaction.”

Lance smiles again. “You’ve got me.”

A pleasant shiver goes up her spine, a blush crawling up her neck as she smiles back without thinking. “I uh...yeah.” Part of her can’t help thinking it’s ridiculous. He’s a Proxy. Not a person.

Or is he? She doesn’t...KNOW. She hasn’t been here long enough to find a good opportunity to get deeper into the systems, though really the systems that handle the proxy signals aren’t what she needs. She needs to find the logs of the research that took place before the program started…talk to more of the Proxies...something.

Something more conclusive than a smile or a blush that will tell her if they’re more than its’ claimed they are.

She relatively certain she knows what answer she wants to find, but that’s another thing entirely.

“Still the same problem though,” she manages after a moment.

“What?”

“You can’t come into our lunchroom, so I’m still stuck out here if I want to talk to you.”

Lance laughs. “Good point. And do you want to?”

Pidge almost doesn’t catch the last part. She’s laughing with him with it registers, and she stops abruptly, still smiling, but her eyebrows have risen up under her hairline, she’s sure. “What?”

He shrugs, trying to make it seem like a casual question. Maybe it would be, but something in his eyes seems to say it isn’t. “Do you ‘want’ to talk to me?”

For a moment she thinks its’ flirting. Or...more serious in another way. She isn’t sure what she thinks. Her mouth opens and she almost presses the question further, trying to decide what to say, but she doesn’t get the chance.

His bracelet goes off, a quiet but shrill alarm beeping from under the table, and Lance pulls it out to activate the small holographic display. The text of the alert scrolls by too quickly for Pidge to read it backward through the projected screen.

“Quiznak,” Lance swears. “I’ve got to go.”

The courtyard is emptying as the lunch shift ends. “What’s wrong?”

“Keith.” He shoots to his feet, abandoning his half-eaten lunch, and Pidge leaves her own to follow him as he darts across the courtyard.

“What about him?”

She knows Keith is the proxy Lance has been assigned to look after this rotation, but that’s all.

Pidge knows she isn’t supposed to enter the Proxy-only areas. But Lance doesn’t answer her, he’s already distracted, and when is she going to get another chance to claim she didn’t have a chance to really think about what she was doing as she followed him?

Lance doesn’t seem to really take notice of her catching the door as he scans back into the building—into the Proxy area. With the lunch shift changing over, there are alternately too many people and Proxies shuffling about to notice her, or no one to stop her as she trails him through another lunchroom much like the staff room, through a handful of other common and recreational areas on the first floor, and to a bank of elevators that lead up into the tower.

He doesn’t realize she’s still with him until she slips into the elevator beside him, giving her a double take as the doors close on the two of them.

“Pidge! What are you—? You can’t be here!”

“What’s going on?” She demands, crossing her arms.

Lance holds up his wristband, which is flashing yellow even though he’s silenced the audible alarm. “Keith needs me. Just...regular Carer stuff. Everything’s fine. You need to get back to the employee side of the complex. There are cameras everywhere; they’ll already know you were here.”

Pidge waves it off and pulls out her tablet. “I can delete the footage from here.” That, at least, she’s had time to set up. But between acclimating herself to the new positions and learning everyone’s schedules so she knows the safest times to look for things, she hasn’t made much use of her mobile connection to the security system yet.

He blinks. “You what? Really?”

A few taps, and she grins up at him. “Everything so far, gone. Replaced with standard footage. The program I wrote last week will smooth out anything weird. And the camera in here isn’t recording right now.”

“That’s...amazing.”

Quiznak; she’s blushing again, isn’t she? “I mean…”

“You should still get back,” Lance says. “I’m headed up to the dorms.”

“Is that where everyone is? When they’re…?” She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to word that. What they’re going through. She doesn't know what it looks like, and she doesn’t have a word for it.

“Yeah.”

Pidge crosses her arms, resolved but still almost hugging herself a bit. “I want to come with you. If you’ll let me.”

Lance doesn’t seem to know what to make of that. “Why?”

She doesn’t know. She tells him as much.

“That’s fair, I guess.”

She means BECAUSE she doesn’t know...but she lets it go.

The elevator opens onto the curving hallway of the tower. A series of doors are set at even intervals, most closed except for Carers coming in and out of the rooms.

A shout echoes down the corridor as a door shuts.

Lance must notice her flinch, because his hand is at her back in an instant as if to steady her. “Maybe you should just—”

“I’m fine,” she says quickly. “Where are you going?”

He lets out a breath in a way that makes it clear he’s not very happy she isn’t listening to him, but he doesn’t try to stop her as he bolts from the elevator and around the curve of the hallway to another door. He pulls her into a small room after him when the door opens in response to scanning his bracelet.

It’s a small bedroom, Pidge realizes as the door hisses shut behind her. Not much more than a bed and a desk and an entertainment screen above a short chest of drawers. Just enough room between the furniture to lie on the floor. At the end of the narrow room, an open doorway leads to what appears to be a small bathroom.

“Dorm” was the right word for it; it’s smaller than her university dorm room was all four years.

“Keith?” Lance is asking. A pale figure in the same kind of scrubs Lance wears, just a darker shade of gray and without the Carer mark, is hunched over on the floor by the desk with one arm hooked over the chair. Dark hair hangs in his face, his other hand twisting in his shirt as he struggles to breathe.

“Keith! What are you doing down there?” Lance says again. He crouches in from of the other Proxy, but rapid gasps are his only answer. Keith’s bracelet is flashing orange in contrast to the yellow of Lance’s.

“Keith?” Lance gets an arm around his shoulders and starts to haul him up and toward the bed. “Come on, don’t be an idiot. All your stuff is over here.”

Finally a voice, and Keith is scowling as he uses it. “‘M…’m fine. Don’t...need…”

Lance snorts as he eases him carefully onto the bed, against a handful of pillows shoved into the corner between the headboard and the wall. “Talk to me when you can string more than three words together.”

“M...more than three words,” Keith retorts. It seems to cost him, leaving him out of air and struggling harder as he grimaces.

“Smart ass,” Lance sighs. The headboard seems to have compartments, and he slides one open to pull out what looks like some sort of oxygen mask. The tube attached to it disappears into the dim compartment as Lance presses it over Keith’s mouth and nose and pulls the elastic strap over his head.

“Did it catch you off guard? What were you doing on the floor? This is what these are for, you know,” Lance fusses.

Keith doesn’t appear to really be listening, focused instead on evening out his breaths as he shivers. Lance is rubbing his back in practiced circles, and Pidge wonders how many times they’ve done this. Or how many times Lance has done it for others.

Something about how routine it all seems for them makes her chest ache as she hovers in the shadows just inside the door.

“Easy...just breathe,” Lance says.

Keith coughs once, settling back into his pillows as the tension in his body finally seems to ease with the air coming in. He’s still making faces—something is still hurting him—but he can breathe now, at least. “-‘ve been doing this just as long as...as you have, you know.”

“Would you hush and let me do my job?”

“Why’d I have to get you this time?” Keith mumbles. He feigns annoyance, but by now Pidge can tell there’s no real heat in it.

“I guess you’re just that lucky,” Lance smirks, clapping his shoulder gently.

They laugh, but it starts up a coughing fit for Keith, who slumps back again in exhaustion when it ends.

“What’ve you still got?” Lance asks.

Keith grimaces as he rubs at his chest. “Still something here...no idea. Usual little stuff. Headache.” He starts to shift and cries out, reaching for his knee. “Geez…! Someone did something stupid...quiznak…!”

He shouts, listing over as he curls in on himself around the offending leg, and Lance catches him and holds on. Whatever it is only seems to get worse. Lance seems to forget Pidge is there, still at the door, and she doesn’t know if the other Proxy ever noticed her at all. She doesn’t know him, but the pained shouts she’s so unused to hearing, even muffled through the mask as they are, still shake her to her core as she draws back even farther against the wall.

She doesn’t dare to step forward until it stops. Until Keith has slumped back to the bed again and it’s mostly quiet except for his harsh breathing.

These rooms must be well insulated for sound. With the door closed in here, she can’t hear anything of what must be happening in the other rooms.

Lance asks Keith if he’s all right, and he’s already nodding as if he anticipated the question. Yet more evidence that this is all the every day for them. This is how it is. The computer systems she helps maintain. The stores of alchemic energy that make it possible to transfer the signals she sees go by every day. The numbers and figures lead here.

She’s always known where the signals went. She knew what was being done to the Proxies for the sake of everyone else in the city, but she didn’t KNOW. Not really.

Pidge hasn’t managed to open her mouth before Keith finally catches sight of her, his brow pinching. “Who the quiznak is that?” His voice is rough, confused.

“Uh...Pidge,” Lance answers. “I told you about her…”

“Why’d you bring her up here!”

“I didn’t; she followed me,” he huffs. He looks to her, and concern is written across his face. “Pidge, are you…?”

“Is it really always like this?” she questions, strained and breathless. She doesn’t mean to cut him off, but she can’t wait any longer to ask.

The question has been building in her chest while Keith writhed, as she tried to comprehend that just a few weeks ago Lance had spent six months like this. In a tiny room, in pain.

That it wasn’t the first time he’d done it, either, if Proxies go on duty at 18. She doesn’t know how old these two are, but they’re at least her age.

Lance swallows. “Pidge…”

Keith pulls off the oxygen mask and reaches to stow it away in the compartment in the headboard without even sitting up. “Yes,” he says simply.

Lance stiffens. “Keith!”

“She deserves to know! You told me what she does here; she deserves to know what she’s helping them do.”

Pidge swipes at her eyes quickly to catch a tear or two that slip free before she can swallow back the lump in her throat. “God…”

A hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “It’s not your fault,” Lance says quietly.

“She’s wearing one of those bracelets, isn’t she?”

“Keith, stop it!”

Her breath hitches, and Pidge tries to pull hers off before she remembers that that won’t do any good. There will still be an entire city-state of people with them on—the largest city Earth has left, at that—and if she doesn’t do something to overwrite the automatic notifications it will be logged, somewhere, that she took it off. Even for a second.

She can’t risk it. Not now. Not if she wants to stay under the radar enough to do something. If she can.

Can she? Is that even...possible?

Someone is apologizing. Why is Lance apologizing? There are arms around her, her forehead pressed into a warm chest. She takes the moment to hide her face and compose herself. When she pulls back Keith is sitting up, watching both of them warily. But despite what he said, he doesn’t seem angry. Just tired.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Pidge grumbles, a delayed reaction to Lance’s murmuring when he pulled her against him. “I’m the one who…”

“You’re not doing anything,” Lance cuts in. “It’s not you.”

“What else do you want to know?” Keith asks.

She lets her hands ball into fists as they fall to her side. As if that might make any of this easier. “I don’t know. I don’t know what there IS to know.”

Lance and Keith exchange a glance. Lance sighs, moving to sit on the edge of the bed and motioning for her to do the same if she’d like.

“You asked if it’s always like this…” he says. “It’s not always exactly the same. Some days are...worse than others. I guess.”

Keith shrugs. “We’re on a staggered schedule so everyone gets breaks every couple of hours or so and a full nights’ sleep, but otherwise yeah. This is it.” As if to punctuate what he’s saying, he grunts at something, holding his side.

“How old are you?” she asks, looking between them.

“We’re 25,” Lance says. “We uh...we go on duty at 18.”

“I-I know that last part…”

“This’s my...eighth rotation?” Keith says. “I think? First time having this idiot for a Carer though.”

Lance shoves his arm. “Shut up; you know you love it.”

How can they be like that? Pidge has never felt anything more painful than a paper cut. A sock in the arm from Matt. To think of sensations like those multiplied by dozens of times or more...everywhere. For so long…

And how can anyone think they’re not people? The way they care for each other like that. The way they can be there for each other and even have compassion for HER in all of this.

She’d been prepared for it to take longer to be convinced. To be sure.

But maybe science and evidence aren’t the answer to everything.

***

Lance walks her back later, when he says there will be the fewest people out and about. Pidge has already messaged Hunk, who’s covering for her being gone, and Lance takes her around to a different elevator to bring her back down.

“This one lets out in a hallway in the back of the first floor that leads around to an entrance that comes out in the back of the shared courtyard,” he explains. “Near the staff bathrooms. Lot easier to explain if someone sees you.”

“Oh…”

She’s already been over and over the schematics for the staff building, but she’s less familiar with the tower.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says then, into the silence that’s fallen in the elevator car.

“Why are you apologizing?”

He shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know...for dragging you into this, I guess. That wasn’t my intention.”

“This isn’t your fault. You’re not the one doing all of this, you...and I’m the one who followed you up there.”

He sighs. “And you’re sure no one will know? No one who’s staff, I mean. None of us will say anything; you don’t have to worry about that.”

Pidge double checks her tablet, tapping in a few commands. “Thanks. And yeah, looks like my programs did their job. I need to shore them up before next time though. They could definitely be more automated.”

“Next time?” Lance asks sharply. His eyebrows hit his hairline. “What are you talking about? You can’t come back here; it’s not safe. Once was bad enough!”

Pidge waves her tablet at him. “What part of hacker genius don’t you understand?”

“It doesn’t matter how smart you are! I…” He trails off before making a face and looking away again. “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he mumbles.

“Happen? What would…?”

He doesn’t answer the question. Not directly. He still isn’t looking at her. “Just...promise me you’ll be careful?”

Now three separate people have asked her that.

She doesn’t get a chance to say anything else before the elevator slows to a stop and the doors open.

“So this is who you’ve been ditching us at lunch more often than usual for, huh?”

Pidge startles at the voice, almost more startled at the arm Lance throws out to shove her behind him as he shouts in surprise. He relaxes quickly, but his face goes pink.

“Veronica!”

A Proxy woman a little older than them is waiting outside the elevator, arms crossed casually as she grins. “What? Did you seriously think you could hide things from ME?”

Lance huffs out a breath as Pidge edges out from behind him and they both slip from the elevator to let it close. “I’m not hiding anything; I’m just getting her back where she belongs.”

Pidge raises a hand, waving it a little. “It’s my fault; I followed him upstairs when I shouldn’t have.”

“What are you even doing down here?” Lance asks. He looks up and down the deserted back hallway as if he’s afraid they’ll be spotted. “And how did you…?”

“Relax, I’m on a break and Rizavi messaged me from upstairs that she saw you headed down with her. Your secret’s safe.” Veronica leans back into the wall across from the elevator, where she moved to give them space to get out. Her shoulders slump tiredly, and Pidge realizes she’s wearing the same darker uniform Keith was wearing. She isn’t a Carer this rotation.

Lance is still on high alert, now shaking his head as he looks around. “There isn’t a secret. Just...is it your long break, or…?”

Veronica sighs and reaches out to wrap her fingers around his wrist. The playful look in her eyes fades, and when it’s gone the dark smudges under them seem almost darker.

“No, but today hasn’t been so bad; I was just hitting the library when she messaged me, all right? I’ll get back upstairs in time. Everything's fine.” A small cloth bag weighed down by what seems to be a book or two appears to corroborate her claim.

Pidge is frozen at Lance’s side, not understanding any of this. After everything she’s already learned today she doesn’t know if she wants to. Lance is relaxing again, but his fingers seem to tremble slightly for a moment when he squeezes the hand Veronica has on his wrist.

“Lance. It’s fine,” she repeats. She smiles again as if to reassure him, and that’s when Pidge realizes how much they look alike. Similar coloring, hair, eyes…

“Okay, okay…”

“I’m not getting into trouble,” she says, before inclining her head slightly in concession. “Today.”

Lance snorts, rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

Veronica swats his hand down. “Would you stop that? You got that from Takashi. I swear he’s teaching you how to worry too much.”

“I wouldn’t have to if it weren’t for you.” Lance glares sideways at Pidge. “And you, now.”

“Hey!” Pidge retorts. “It’s not like it’s a regular thing.”

“YET.”

Veronica’s eyebrows go up in a pleasantly surprised sort of way; she pushes off from the wall to link an arm with Pidge. “Causing trouble for my brother, are you? I might have to like you already.”

Brother…? Pidge was under the impressions all Proxies were born out of womb tanks, but she can’t deny the resemblance.

The Proxy woman’s bag bumping against her hip between them almost distracts her from the hand that slips briefly into her back pocket, out of Lance’s eyesight. It almost keeps Pidge from realizing that something is left behind there as Veronica breaks away to give Lance a brief hug before she slips past them into the elevator.

Lance watches her go, but Pidge watches him. He doesn’t seem to have any idea what Veronica did, letting out a heavy breath once the doors have closed.

“Are you all right?” she asks. She pushes a hand back into her pocket as if it’s just resting there, leaving her arm out at an angle. Her fingers probe the small shape left there; the outline of a data storage chip makes her heart jump.

“Yeah,” Lance sighs.

“What...what did she mean calling you her brother? Is that even...a thing?” He laughs once, and the way her heart is already starting to pound it almost makes her jump.

“Not really, but our original human DNA donors were related, so…” He shrugs.

Pidge can’t help but smile a little at that. “How do you know? That could have been as long as a couple hundred years ago.” She knows the same DNA sequences from the original project have been is reused since its’ beginning, though more patterns have been added; there’s no way to know exactly how long ago it was, unless he knows somehow.

Lance motions down the hallway as if to get them moving, onward to the exit Pidge needs to use to get back to the staff building, and she falls into step beside him.

“One of our predecessors found out somehow...passed it down. I’m not sure. Veronica told me when we were kids.” He makes a face. “Anyway, I just...worry about her, I guess. She’s...her.”

“You two are...close?”

A nod. “I guess we always were, but then she got me through my first Proxy rotation, so...” He winces again as he trails off, as if he realizes what he’s talking about. He only seems to react to it when he’s talking to her, when he knows it’s more difficult for her.

“Right…” she trails. Veronica must have been his Carer the first time, he means.

And what must that have been like? She can’t imagine.

Lance stops short of a heavy door that, through a small reinforced window, shows it opens to the tunnel of brick that hides the bathrooms behind the courtyard.

“Anyway. This is where I stop.” The corner of his mouth quirks up, but it isn’t a smile. “Can’t be back in the courtyard until lunch tomorrow.”

Pidge swallows. She reaches for the door, but as much as part of her brain wants to get out of here and back to the familiar, back to somewhere she can process all of this...part of her doesn’t want to leave. She looks back.

“And I’ll see you then, right?” she asks.

Lance smiles for real now. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

***

Hunk almost pulls her over yanking her into the office and shutting the door behind her. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“The camera in here is on loop,” he says, motioning vaguely up toward the ceiling. “What happened?”

Pidge doesn’t know how to answer that. She doesn’t have the brain space yet to answer that. Her fingers slide into her back pocket again, itching to be home where she can find out what it is in privacy.

But the way Hunk is looking at her now...it’s like he understands. He kind of smiles, but it isn’t really that. Not really. It makes her think of the look Lance gave her before she left him.

“What?” she whispers.

“You’re one of us now, aren’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I'm not really sure what to say about this AU but that it's inspired quite a bit by the book "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. There's also a movie based on the book, and I've also been told that The Island has a similar premise. There's nothing here about harvesting organs though, buuut it's probably just as dark so...? *shrug* Sorry...? Plangst is...my thing, I guess...? *insert sweat drop emoji* In any case, I hope you enjoy my AU attempt, and I'd love to hear what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I can't wait to hear what you think!

“One of...who?”

Pidge is still whispering, but she isn’t afraid. Not of Hunk, anyway. Her stomach clenches, but maybe it’s just the feeling that things are about to change even more than they already have.

“One of…” Hunk pauses, looking her over in what seems like concern. It’s difficult to tell in the dim office and the glare of the walls crowded with screens. “Are you okay?”

Pidge shakes her head, feeling lightheaded as he guides her to a chair. “I don’t know anymore,” she admits. 

He’s silent for a moment. “I uh...I know it's got to be a lot…”

He does know. “It’s awful…”

Hunk nods as he leans into the desk beside her. “Yeah.”

“Have you seen it?” she asks. “Have you…?”

“Not exactly. My family—I grew up not believing in it.” He holds up his wrist, with his bracelet and its soft green indicator lights. “This? Totally fake.”

She almost rises back out of her seat at that. “You found a way around the system?” She remembers trying to take her bracelet off upstairs. Knowing it would be recorded somewhere. 

“Unfortunately, not yet. More like I was just never on it. The fake’s just to avoid suspicion.”

“Oh…”

There’s nothing illegal about not being on the system. It’s just frowned upon. Seen as strange and fanatical.

Pidge sinks back into her chair, but Hunk holds out the wrist the fake bracelet is on to let her look at it. It gives her something to focus on for a moment while she gathers her thoughts. The fake is very good, the quality of the metal, lights, and clasp are no different from the one she wears. The light weight of the metal is the same. 

“Is that why you’re here, then?” she asks. “To figure it out?”

“Among other things…” He hesitates, as if he isn’t sure if he should say more.

“I...all of us—people like me who get that this is...wrong—we want to end this. This whole…thing,” he says, gesturing around them vaguely. “I mean who knows if it would even be in my lifetime—it’s been going on for two hundred years already—but...that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna do what I can, you know?”

She nods, cursing herself inwardly for the tears she finds herself blinking back. 

“Pidge?”

“I…” She swipes at her eyes. “If...if you grew up outside the system...then...you know what it’s like? Even if you haven’t been up there, you still know, you…”

“Yeah. I don’t have to see what they’re doing to the Proxies.” Hunk winces. “Broke my arm once as a kid—stupid accident. It was bad enough how much it hurt, but the doctors didn’t know what to do with me because I was actually in pain. They’re not trained to deal with that. All the looks we got…”

Allura gets those same looks everywhere she goes. Pidge is used to it—used to ignoring them, and used to seeing her friend without a bracelet. But she knows what he means.

“How many of there are you?” she asks. “People like you.”

“There are a few more right here in the facility. Elsewhere, I’m not sure. We don’t all know everything; it’s safer that way.”

Pidge lets her hand drift back to her pocket, where the data chip rests. “Are there Proxies who know what you’re trying to do?”

“Some. Why?”

***

“Why did Veronica give this to _me_?”

Pidge feels safer now, in her own living room, more clear-headed away from the Proxy facility. Having Hunk at her desk is new—having anyone other than family or Allura in her apartment is new, really—but she doesn’t mind not being alone right now, either. She hovers over Hunk’s shoulder as he uses her computer to check the chip, clutching a warm mug of tea to her chest.

“She said she heard about you from Lance, huh? So she must know you know me,” he says. 

His eyes widen as he scrolls through the files on the device Veronica slipped to Pidge, which on the outside looks like nothing more than a movie chip. It even has the name of some old film written across the plastic cover.

“I think this is the stuff we’ve been trying to get out of there for weeks; I thought we were gonna have to wait until Veronica was on Carer duty again.”

“What is it?” Pidge leans closer to the screen, not sure if she’s more curious, or anxious. 

“Recordings.” He opens a video file, but leaves it suspended in the dark opening frame and doesn’t press play. 

“What kind of recordings…?”

Hunk lets out a breath. “The Proxies’ bracelets aren't supposed to have full functionality. They can communicate with each other, but not outside of their own network, and the public network can’t link to theirs. You know, we can’t message any of them from here like we could message each other…” 

Pidge nods that she understands him so far, and he nods back and continues. “Right. So...there are security cameras all over the Proxy tower, but not in their rooms. We can get footage of the common areas hacking into the Proxy-only area only cameras, but we can’t get what what we really need. The Proxies on actual Proxy duty have to be in their rooms when...yeah. Anyway.”

Oh. So that was why Lance was so worried about Veronica making it back upstairs “in time.” 

“So I figured out how to modify one of their bracelets to be able to record, and talked her through doing it herself so we wouldn’t be seen doing it outside. I don’t know if she modified just hers, or some of the others’ too, but they didn’t get enough footage before the rotation.”

Pidge blinks. “Why couldn’t someone else get the chip to you?” 

“She didn’t want to put anyone else at risk; doing _anything_ is a lot more of a risk for them than it is for us.”

“Is that why she slipped it to me without letting Lance see her do it?”

“Yeah…” Hunk turns to look at her suddenly. “You can’t tell Lance about any of this. I mean, he knows I’m sympathetic, at least—that’s why we’re friends—but...he doesn’t really know about the rest of it. Veronica’s asked us to keep him out of it, and I kind of don’t blame her.”

She can’t help thinking of the care Lance took in helping Keith; how he seemed to almost not want to tell her things just because he knew they wouldn’t be easy for her. 

“But that isn’t right. You know he’d want to help.”

“He would also have an absolute stroke if he knew how much Veronica was doing, and I can’t do that to him. He worries enough.”

Anyway, I just...worry about her, I guess. She’s...her.

The way Veronica had to work so hard to reassure him everything was fine. The way his hands were trembling…

“Hunk...what aren’t you telling me?”

Why are they protecting Lance in particular?

Hunk looks away again, back to the computer, turning the sound down before he starts to scrub through the videos. “They’ve all been through a lot, okay? And anyway, I need to see if this stuff is what I think it is; you don’t have to watch…”

She does anyway. She doesn’t _want_ to see any more but they deserve that, she thinks. To be seen. For someone outside their isolated world in that tower to know what they’re going through. 

Hunk has turned the audio down to barely audible as he skips through some of the clips, but she can make out the the quiet sounds of distress and the urgent, gentle voices of Carers helping how they can. Sometimes Veronica herself. 

Pidge can’t make out the words, but the visuals are awful enough. Screams muffled into pillows. A dark haired young woman clutching Veronica’s hand, gasping. A boy who can’t be any older than 18 sobbing into his Carer’s shoulder. 

The videos are often at odd angles or half obscured, taken without being obvious about it, but they get the point across. Hunk doesn’t open all of them. After a few he closes the folder and clear his throat.

“Yeah...this is what we need,” he says quietly. “People need to see his.”

His eyes are damp, and Pidge is swallowing past an aching throat. “I...I could get it out there, I—”

Hunk gets to his feet as he ejects the chip. “I’m sure you could, but we already have a plan for this. We’re going to get this stuff offworld.”

It will spread farther if it’s dispersed on interplanetary networks, he means. It may help Altea’s growing controversy as well as informing Earth’s people.

“To who?” she asks. “Do you have people offworld?”

“We do, but you’ve said your family is close to Princess Allura, right?”

“Allura is…?”

_The entire situation is extremely volatile. Please...I won’t think less of you if you go in there, but if you do...just be careful._

“Yeah,” Hunk says. He looks almost apologetic as he waves the chip a little. “I have another contact that would be able to get this to her, but probably not as fast as you could.”

It’s all starting to make sense now. Allura’s warning. But what about her dad’s? Is he involved? She opens her mouth to ask if Hunk knows, but thinks better of it.

That’s enough revelation for one day. She doesn’t want to know that yet, and maybe it’s safer if she doesn’t right now.

It seems Lance isn’t the only one being protected, and she’s too tired, suddenly, to be angry right now. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Pidge sighs. 

A hand lands gently on her shoulder as she pulls open her messages. “Hey, I’m sorry. I know it’s—”

“A lot. You said that,” she snaps. She didn’t mean to. “Sorry…”

“It’s okay. You want me to go?” He leaves the chip on her desk, angling as if to head for the door.

Pidge sags onto the end of her couch. “No, it’s okay…”

_Hey, Allura, I need to see you._

The response comes within moments. _I may not be available for a couple of movements, but I’d like to meet next time I’m able. Is everything all right? How is the job?_

She twists her wrist to show Hunk the message. 

“Tell her it’s about some friends of yours. As in yours mutually. Say ‘friends of ours.’”

Pidge raises an eyebrow at him, but she types out the response. _I need to talk to you. It’s about some friends of ours._

“Like that?”

“Yeah.”

This time the answer comes almost instantly. _I can be there in two quintants._

***

Two days. Two days until she can talk to someone who has been her only real friend outside of family for years. Pidge has been used to that. When your only friend happens to be royalty from another planet, it’s sometimes hard to get together often. They would never have met at all if the Altean princess weren’t working with her father for some reason.

Or is the truth of that something else she doesn’t know?

Waking up the next morning feels strange. Like the world has changed even though it hasn’t. A message from Allura is waiting, asking her if she’s all right, but she doesn’t know how to answer that. 

_I’ll talk to you tomorrow night._

Usually she would be used to waiting. Today it feels like torture. 

Waiting until lunch is almost worse. Nothing really gets done, but Pidge doesn’t really mind that. Not when she knows what she’s doing, now. She tries to tell herself that it would be more difficult to help if she weren’t here, but it doesn’t stop the aching in her stomach.

At the table she picks at her food, feet fidgeting under the bench and trying to ignore Hunk’s concerned gaze from across the table.

“Those mashed potatoes aren’t going to eat themselves.”

A shadow falls over her plate, and Pidge looks up into a face haloed in light. She didn’t realize how badly she just needed to see Lance smile until he does. It’s real and it’s not that melancholy look he gave her before they parted yesterday, and it unravels something in her that had been far too tightly wound since. 

“Hey,” she says. It comes out in a rush of breath. 

“Hey.”

She smiles back as he takes his usual seat between them. She wants to say something...hug him...something. But they can’t. Not out here. She lets a hand rest on his arm for a moment, his skin cool under her fingers from just coming out of the building.

The tower that is his prison. 

Pidge tries to cover her grimace as she pulls away, but fails spectacularly.

“Pidge?” Lance asks. “Are you okay?”

She opens her mouth. She wants to tell him she's fine. She wants to quiet the guilt building behind his eyes.

Hunk saves her. “Hey, Lance, what are you doing tonight?”

Lance’s eyebrows go up as his gaze shift over to Hunk. That question seems to mean something; something that makes him smile again.

“You know, the usual whole lot of nothing. You?”

“Same.” Hunk is grinning now, they both are, and Pidge is entirely lost. 

“What’s going…?” _What are you up to?_

“Nothing,” Lance answers innocently. 

***

“See?” Hunk says. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Nothing but a creepy old elevator shaft,” Pidge grumbles, staring up into the dark openness as she leans out into it to look up from the ground floor doors he brought her to. The shaft goes up into the Proxy tower, and down below her into the basement. “What are we doing here?”

“Cheering you up.” 

He reaches into the shaft to tug on a rope she hadn’t even made out in the dimness, and a small platform just large enough for one person to sit or stand one swings down in front of the open elevator doors. On further inspection, it seems to be connected to some kind of powered pulley system.

“Literally up?” she asks.

“We’re waiting for someone, then yeah.”

“Who?” 

“Someone else on the right side of things. Thought it might make you feel better to meet some of the others. He’s the only one who could make it on short notice tonight.”

“Oh…” Pidge isn’t sure what else to say to that, but she’s grateful for the thought. She inspects the makeshift lift while they wait. “Is this thing safe?”

A scoff. “Of course it’s safe! I built it. There used just to be like a rope ladder here. This is much better.”

Pidge chuckles as the door they came through a few meters down the abandoned back hallway opens and closes again. A guy she vaguely recognizes from Audit raises a hand in greeting.

“Hey, James!” Hunk calls. “You’re up first; Pidge doesn’t think my lift is safe.”

James shrugs as he catches up to them. “I think I might be on her side; that thing scares the crap out of me.”

“Hey, it’s better than a ladder! You’re just afraid of heights.”

“I am not! I’m still working on that pilots’ license, thank you very much.”

Hunk snorts. “Then get on the lift, flyboy.”

James shakes his head and steps on, clicking on a flashlight he pulled from his pocket. “This thing is just shaky…”

“How is there a whole elevator shaft that no one uses back here?” Pidge asks. Hunk is watching James and working the lift controls, but he answers.

“There are a couple, actually. This whole complex is a little cobbled together. The program started fast and had to grow quickly to accommodate the demand for Proxy services. They kept adding on and some areas became defunct. It’s hard to even get any power back here after they rewired last time, so nobody cares that we use one of the rooms up there. If they even know.”

“‘We’ being…? What? Other ‘sympathetic’ people?”

Hunk shrugs. “Something like that.” 

They watch the flashlight beam fade to a pinprick above them, and James shouts down when he’s where he needs to be for Hunk to stop the lift. The point of light bounces in the dark shaft as his shadowy form pries open the doors he’s hanging beside. After a few moments the ropes shake as he presumably steps off.

“All yours!” the voice calls down.

Hunk lowers the small platform again. “Your turn,” he says. “You can sit instead if you want to.”

Pidge bites her lip and shrugs. She thinks about sitting down on the platform as it swings slightly in the open shaft, but in the end she holds Hunk’s arm and steps on like James did, clinging to the ropes when she has to let go of her friend. 

“You good?”

She nods, clutching tighter as the lift starts to move. He seems to take it a little slower with her, for which she’s grateful. James is waiting at the opening several floor up to pass her over to the hallway. 

“You get used to it,” he tells her.

Pidge laughs once, looking back down into the mostly dark shaft as Hunk lowers the platform again to bring himself up.

“It’d be more fun if there was a net down there or something…”

The hallway they’re standing in is nearly as dark, James’s flashlight the only illumination. She nearly jumps at the scraping sounds behind them, until the flashlight reveals a large air-duct panel opening. A new beam from another flashlight pours out into the hall as a familiar lanky figure climbs from the opening. 

“Lance!”

“Fancy meeting you here,” he smiles.

Hunk didn’t tell her exactly what they were doing, but after that weird back and forth he and Lance had at lunch, she isn’t really surprised he’s here. She is a little more surprised when he turns back to help two others from the vent—a girl with dark hair and a ponytail, and a darker skinned guy. All three of them in the same Carer uniform she’s used to seeing Lance in. 

James is greeting the other two as Hunk climbs out into the hallway. Pidge hears the name Rizavi, and wonders if the girl is who Veronica had mentioned yesterday; the one who gave her the heads up that she and Lance were coming downstairs together. The other Proxy she doesn’t know is introduced as Ryan. 

“What is this?” Pidge asks, raising an eyebrow at Lance teasingly. “I thought you didn’t like trouble?”

He shrugs, sheepish. “No one’s perfect.”

Rizavi leans over his shoulder to shake Pidge’s hand. “Lance? Not liking trouble? You should have met him when we were teenagers; you couldn’t keep him OUT of trouble.”

Lance rolls his eyes, reaching up to rub at the bridge of his nose the way he did yesterday. “Riz, I swear to—”

“Stop it,” she scolds. She almost bats his hand down the way Veronica did, but he drops it before she can.

“ANYway,” he says, ignoring her to focus on Pidge, “it’s safe enough for those of us on Carer rotation to get over here. As long as we’re not technically leaving the building no one seems to care—if they even know. They keep a closer eye on everyone on Proxy duty though, so…”

“Calculated risks,” Pidge assesses with a nod. She can feel her face splitting in a grin. 

“Exactly! Now if I could get that across to Veronica—”

“Good luck,” Rizavi snorts.

The others are headed off down the dark hallway, and Lance motions over Pidge’s shoulder to indicate they should follow. She falls into step at his side, quiet and unsure of where they’re going until the group stops again.

A single cable on the floor that must be run here from somewhere with power leads into one of the rooms. When Hunk flips a switch groups of soft string lights illuminate a decent-sized room full of old couches and pillows, board games and card games and a ping pong table that are worn enough they were probably retired from somewhere else in the building. 

What makes Pidge pull in a breath is the string lights reflecting in a bank of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city. 

“Oh…”

“Nice, huh?” Lance asks quietly. “Well...not really. But it’s ours.”

“I love it,” she breathes. 

Her fingers brush against his between them, and when she squeezes them she doesn’t pull away too quickly like she did from his arm at lunch earlier. For a moment Lance squeezes back, his cheeks turning pink in the soft glow from lights. 

A whoop startles them out of it, James and Ryan at the ping pong table, already in the middle of a match. Hunk and Rizavi seem to be sorting through the games for something to do. 

Pidge clears her throat and crosses to the windows. They’re not extremely high, but it’s high enough to be a decent view. 

“Is it safe that these windows are here?” She’s trying to place where they are in the tower from what she can see, but it isn’t coming together. Maybe she’s still tired from...everything. 

Lance nods from beside her. “These are just like the rest of the tower; mirrored on the outside. No one can see in.” 

He fiddles with a latch where the windows split in the middle, pushing the top panel out to let in some fresh air and the sounds of the city. “We can even do this!” He spread his hands as if presenting the open window as a feature. “Granted, not the most exciting thing for you, but when you’re usually only let outside once or twice a day in the six months of the year you’re allowed outside at _all_ , well...little extra fresh air is nice.”

“Yeah…”

Lance winces. “Sorry, I’m doing it again.”

Pidge shakes her head quickly. “No, no, really, I want to know these things—you don’t have to protect me—I just…” 

A pang of guilt hits her at that, knowing some of what his sister and some of the others are keeping from HIM. 

“I know what you mean,” Lance is saying. 

He’s looking at her like he’s going to apologize again. Which is ridiculous. He has nothing to apologize for. 

“I do want to talk to you,” Pidge says. It’s the first thing she can think of, besides being true.

At least it does the job. Lance blinks, confused. “What?”

“Yesterday. Before...everything. You asked me if I wanted to—if I like talking to you, I guess.” Her cheeks are starting to burn. “I uh...I do.”

“Oh.” He smiles sheepishly. “Good to know.”

Pidge smiles back and leans against the waist-height reinforced split of the window, cautiously at first and then more heavily when she’s sure it’s safe. Lance leans into the fresh air with her, their arms resting side by side on the metal. 

In the relative quiet, with the sounds of play and delight behind them—so much different from those awful videos—Pidge lets out a breath and finds herself relaxing, the tension left in her gut from the last forty-eight hours slowly easing itself away. She almost leans more into Lance than the window sill, his warmth welcome in the flow of air from outside. 

A breeze wafts up to play with his bangs as she watches, blowing her own across her eyes. She doesn’t know she’s closed them until gentle fingers brush against her forehead, pushing the hair behind her ears. A burst of laughter escapes her as she opens her eyes again.

“It’s nice up here,” she says.

“It is,” Lance agrees, laughing with her.

She had turned back to the blinking lights of the city when she said it, but from the corner of her eye she could just tell that he was still looking at her.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, look at this.”

Pidge doesn’t want to open her eyes. The breeze from the window across her face is too pleasant, but the sudden absence of Lance’s warmth from beside her is an incentive to move.

“Hmm? What?”

When she glances back Lance has crouched on the floor. She watches him curl up the edge of a worn rug behind one of the couches and pull at one of the floor tiles.

He chuckles at her when he glances up, and she can only imagine what her face must look like. She can feel the confusion on it.

“You wanted to know things, right?”

She raises an eyebrow. “I’m wondering if this is a trick question.”

Lance gets a hold on the tile and pulls it aside. While usually there would just be another layer of floor beneath, instead there’s only darkness below. A cavity in the floor that the soft string lights don’t reach.

Pidge steps closer as he switches on a light in his bracelet to guide his hand as he reaches down into the hole. She isn’t sure what she’s expecting him to come up with, but it isn’t the stack of what looks like real, bound writing paper.

After what happened to Earth, most things like that have to come from offworld now. Paper is expensive.

“Notebooks?” she asks. It isn’t as if she hasn’t seen real books before. Her parents certainly have enough of them, and she’s written on paper before. She just didn't expect to see anything like that here.

“Journals,” Lance explained. He sets the small stack on the floor and reaches down again to pull out more. Some are nicely bound volumes and some are no more than clipped paper, some older than others. “It’s kind of a time capsule in here. A couple of these are more than 100 years old.”

“They’re...written by Proxies?”

“Yeah. It’s actually safer this way; files could be found more easily,” he says, motioning to his bracelet briefly. “So I guess someone started getting paper and things to us and...yeah.”

Pidge is hesitant to touch them—something about them feels...sacred?—until Lance holds one out to her.

“It’s okay,” he says, with a smile. “They’re here to be read.”

She takes the thick journal, reverent as she carefully opens the handwritten pages. She thumbs backward in time 50 years, 60...taking in barely more than the dates and the shapes of the letters for now. She’s almost afraid to see more.

“Why doesn’t anyone know about these? I mean...outside of here?” she questions.

“It’s more for us, really, just to...not feel alone, I guess. But we show them to people who care.”

Why does her face heat up when he says that? When he looks at her like he is now? There’s a trust in the air between them but also a strange tension. Like he wants to let her in but he’s afraid of asking her to go farther than she wants to go.

Pidge isn’t sure how far she wants into this. But she knows she can’t do nothing.

She wonders about Lance. He seems so strong—he seems to care so much—but sometimes he seems so afraid. Like with Veronica yesterday.

Then again, who isn’t afraid sometimes? Maybe it would be stupid not to be.

Whatever might be passing between them is interrupted by Hunk shouting from across the room. “Hey, Lance! You guys want in on this?”

Pidge pulls in a quick breath and Lance makes a strange noise, almost a cough, both of them startled. The others have consolidated on the floor around a low coffee table with an old version of a popular game. The cheap included holographic projectors are flickering in the low light.

Rizavi nudges Hunk’s shoulder. “The dorks are in the books; let ‘em be.”

“As a fan of books myself, I resent that,” Hunk retorts.

Lance laughs. “Do you want to?” he asks, nodding to the game. When she hesitates, her fingers trailing over the pages in her hands, he shrugs. “We don’t have to.”

“I don’t suppose I could borrow one of these, could I?”

He winces. “It’s not really safe to let them leave this room. For us or you.”

Then she’d really rather read what she can while she’s here. “Make sense...you should go play, though. I’m fine here.”

Lance shrugs and settles back to lean against the couch. “I’m good.”

“You don’t have to sit here while I read.”

He picks up a clipped sheaf of paper and flips through as if he’s looking for something specific. Like where he left off. “Who’s just sitting here?”

Pidge leans over to snag a nearby cushion to drag over for herself. “Surely you’ve read all of these by now.”

“Some of them more than once.”

***

The next evening, the alert tone for the front door has already gone off several times before Pidge hears it, so trapped is she in her thoughts.

She forgets almost until she opens the door that she’s left Allura’s occasional messages unread since yesterday.

“Pidge!” A white-haired figure bolts through the door, latching onto her and holding tight. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay! I’m fine. I didn’t mean to...sorry.” She tugs the princess inside before she can be seen, waving to her companion to hurry in too. “I’m not letting you go sit in the pod, Coran; come on, I have your favorite tea.”

Allura’s advisor—who is really just as much a friend as Allura herself—gives in quickly. They settle him in the kitchen with his tea and bring their own mugs into the living room of the small apartment.

Allura doesn’t press, waiting for Pidge to settle on the couch and take a few sips of her tea to calm her nerves before she jumps in.

“So...you knew about all of it,” she says. It isn’t accusing. Just a statement of fact. “What it was really like there...the Proxies...the people trying to help them…”

“Yes.”

Pidge lets out a breath. “You’re what, their leader?”

Allura shakes her head quickly. “They’ve been about their work much longer than I have even been alive. I’ve only become something of a central figure due to my position, I suppose. The resources I have to help.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I mean...more than you did. Everyone knows you don’t like the Proxy system, I guess—I mean you don’t make that a secret, really—but why didn’t you tell me there was more to it than that?”

Pidge finds herself looking at the floor, unsure of what she wants to hear. The clicking of a mug against the glass coffee table accompanies a sigh from Allura.

“I wanted to. But I also wanted you to come by your convictions on your own. If you’re upset with me, however, I can understand that.”

“No, no, I…” She looks up again. As much as Allura says she would understand if Pidge were angry, she’s perched anxiously on the edge of her seat looking as if she very much hopes it isn’t so. “I’m not mad at you.”

The tension in Allura’s shoulders eases, but she still looks concerned. “What happened?”

Pidge swallows, unsure of how to explain. “I...met a couple of the others at work. That’s how I knew the code. Or whatever it is.”

“I assumed as much.”

She nods. “And...I got to know some of them. The Proxies. I saw what happens to them. I’ve talked to them. I—They’re just like us.” Her throat clogs, forcing her to swallow past it to continue. “Why did anyone ever try to make us think otherwise?”

“I wish I knew,” Allura sighs. “I like to think most people now only believe it because that’s what they’ve been taught. But at the beginning…” She shrugs. “It’s harder to say. I do know that with such a relatively small population remaining on Earth, it stands to reason that those in power wish to remain so; they can control an entire planet.”

“And that’s bad?”

She’s never really thought about it before. The only planets she’s ever had access to information about are Earth and Altea. Altea has a constitutional monarchy similar to systems that used to exist here on Earth—a system developed from its’ past as a true monarchy—and the majority of Earth’s population exists here in this city, led by the Council. The idea of more than one government across a planet is something only found in history books.

“Perhaps not inherently. But it can go badly. If anyone would know, Altea would. We have our own problems, and we still do. Here, the Council are the ones who provide the pain-free existence your people have become so accustomed to. Their predecessors made the arrangement with Altea that made it possible, and they maintain the system at no cost to your citizens. In doing so, they maintain the power here. I don’t know what their intentions are for doing so, but the fact that they do it at the expense of the Proxies…”

Pidge winces. “...Yeah.”

She sets her tea aside and pushes to her feet. They carry her to the windows looking out over the city. The view isn’t as high or as good as the view from the hideout in the facility, but it’s enough to mull over as her chest clenches.

“I mean it’s not like I ever really thought this place was perfect or anything, but…”

“Nowhere is,” Allura says. “Least of all Altea. None of it would be possible without the gross misuse of our Alchemy. But what are we doing here if not to try to make things better?”

The corner of her mouth quirks up a bit, and Pidge twists away from the window. “‘Here’ meaning here, you and me, or ‘here’ alive to begin with?”

Allura chuckles softly. “Both, perhaps?”

Pidge comes back to the couch, curling up on one end, a little more at ease now. This is Allura, after all. She’s no different than she’s always been.

“How did it start?” she asks. “On Altea.”

“That...is a much longer story.” Allura retrieves her tea for a sip before she begins.

“On Altea the practice began many, many centuries ago as a mercy for the dying. It was regarded as an honor for a family member or friend to take the pain of their dying loved one - to ease them on their way. And...in a world where the living could know what it felt like to die...we had peace.” She makes a face. “But that was long ago.”

“What went wrong?”

“Greed. What always goes wrong. We don’t know if it began with the alchemists, or those who hired them, but people realized they could profit from providing a way to take away pain - a way that was more sure and complete than medicine. Eventually what was once a sacred act became common and...awful.”

“Quiznak...and it was only more profitable once the technology to clone people or grow extra bodies to transfer to was available.” The Proxy system doesn’t profit anyone money here on Earth—except, perhaps, the Council—but she understands.

Allura nods, her lips pressed into a thin line now as she stares into her cooling tea.

“That IS awful,” Pidge sighs.

“And now it’s been a part of our culture for so long...I fear it will take much longer to see it eradicated on Altea than it might here. That is why Earth is so important in this fight. A smaller population to convince, to prove it can be done.”

Pidge slips a hand into her pocket, toying with the chip there for a moment before she brings it out. “About that...I didn’t just call you to talk. I have this for you. The footage you’ve been waiting for.”

Allura perks up immediately. “From your facility?” She’s up quickly, taking the chip Pidge offers. “But I thought this would take weeks more!”

“It’s a long story...right place right time, I guess. What are you going to do with it? It’s...I mean I know you know it’s horrible…I know people need to know, but why this way? Did you know some of them have kept journals?”

“I did.” Allura turns the chips over in her hand like something precious, smiling briefly at the old movie title on the case. “That information has been passed along, but unfortunately we had to determine that it would be far too easy for someone to claim they were faked, if we tried to release them now. Perhaps one day they’ll be a way to remind us all not to let anything like this happen again. Such things have held that place in history before. But right now they will not help us. Not enough, in any case. Some have been persuaded by similar documents on Altea, but...”

Oh.

“Will THESE even be enough?” Pidge asks, nodding to the chip.

“Likely not on their own...I’m not even certain how much my voice will help. But we will do everything we can. There are others who are ready to speak up, as well. On both planets. We also have footage from Altea. We’ve been waiting to release it all together.” Her eyes narrow at nothing in particular. Maybe the culprits in her mind. “A coordinated strike.”

“So there’s a plan?”

“Of course!” Allura clasps her arm, lowering herself onto the couch beside Pidge. “And you’ve done so much to help already.”

Pidge looks back skeptically. “I ferried a chip.” She swallows. “Can I do more? What do you need? If there are any systems there you need access to, or…?”

“Right now the best thing for you and everyone else at this facility to do is to keep your heads down,” Allura says gently. “It may take some time for these files to be released, as we need to edit them to protect the Proxies in them as much as we can, but once they are out there we will need people in that facility. People who can remain under the radar so that we still have them inside if things don’t go well.”

“That’s not exactly what I was hoping.”

“I know,” Allura chuckles. “I’m sorry. I appreciate that you want to do more, but right now it’s most useful for you just to be there.”

Pidge opens her mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. For a moment the hand on her arm is warmer, and it isn’t Allura.

She’s back in the tower and Lance is there, a hand on her arm as he hands her another journal. At some point she moved to lean against the couch beside him instead of slouching in the floor on a cushion. Her back complained, so she moved, and...they stayed like that.

It was nice.

“Pidge?”

She blinks, and Allura is peering at her curiously. “Hmm?”

A smile. “You’ve grown close to one or more of them, haven’t you?”

The heat clawing up her neck is extinguished quickly by the anxiety in her gut. “Will any of this even help them in their lifetime? W-will they get out...or?”

Or are these feelings pointless?

“I wish I could say.” The fingers on her arm squeeze reassuringly. “We can try.”

***

It takes longer to work the lift herself, having only seen it done once a couple of nights ago, but Pidge manages it eventually. The hideout is dark and empty until she flips on the twinkling lights.

If it isn’t safe to let any of the journals leave this place, she’ll just have to read them here.

The one she was reading last night is on the top of the stack once she pries up the floorboard they’re hidden under, but just under it is the clipped sheaf of papers Lance was reading. Something makes her pull it out instead.

***

Pidge growls quietly when her code errors out, only to realize moments later that it was her fault. An incorrect input. Somehow that’s more annoying than the error itself.

From the corner of her eyes she catches Hunk looking up when she pounds a fist on her desk.

“Pidge. You uh...you okay?”

“Fine,” she replies tersely.

Still, she isn’t surprised to hear the rattling of chair wheels rolling over closer to her. Hunk leans into her view from the side. “Uh huh. Sure. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she tries.

A soft beep tells her Hunk has the cameras here in the office to loop a few minutes of safe footage. “Try again,” he says.

“It’s fine. Allura has the footage, there’s a...plan and everything…”

“‘But’ what? Come on, I’ve known you at least long enough to know that’s definitely a ‘but’ face.”

Pidge tries to avoid his gaze, but it doesn’t work. “But…” She lets her head drop onto the desk. “Don’t you worry? What if...what if this takes too long? What about...our friends?”

Hunk sighs quietly, and there are a few moments of near silence before he answers, broken only by the hum of the computers and the squeaking of his chair as he shifts. “Yeah. I worry. I want them out of here, too.”

She nods in thanks, because she needed to hear that. She needed to know she isn’t alone, feeling that. Allura may have known more about the fight for much longer, but she doesn’t have friends here. She can’t understand that part.

But Hunk does. And he’s still looking at her. “What?” she mumbles.

“Is there...more than that?”

She flushes again, just like she did when Allura asked.

“Oh,” Hunk says. As if he should have known. But how should he have known when Pidge had been trying to ignore it herself?

Quiznak.

***

_October 2367_

_We had to move the hideout this week. They’re going to be remodeling that part of the tower for more dorms. There are more genetic patterns now, and the years below us are going to be much bigger. There are already more kids in the years coming of age now._

_My brother and sister went into quarantine with a larger class than I did. (And if whoever may read this someday doesn’t already know, I don’t really mean brother and sister. We’re all grown in tubes—that you probably know—I just mean they look a lot like me. Our genetic donors were probably related or something. So we look out for each other. We have to make our own families.)_

_But anyway, I don’t really know how to feel about there being more of us. Or...that’s a lie, I guess. I hate it. They’re bringing more of us into the world just to suffer for them. Who cares if we’re going to have more company if that’s what they’re here for._

_At least we have this place. It’s more empty than the last one right now because we couldn’t move the larger furniture—we had to destroy it—but it’s still ours. Somewhere we’re not just...pawns._

_We’ll make this new place better as we can. We were able to bring most of the smaller stuff. The games and pillows and the journals. B brought us a couple of new games.. He called it a housewarming gift. I’d never heard that term before, but I kind of like it._

_I think B is a little mad at me right now. I went back to the old room one time too many and almost got caught last night. Someone was coming up to survey a little earlier than we’d anticipated. I was supposed to meet B in the new room, and I was late because I had to go around the long way._

_He looked like he was about to have a heart attack when I told him why. Maybe I shouldn’t have. He grabbed me and held on for...a really long time. I mean, he’s hugged me before but...this was different._

A sudden movement near the door startles Pidge into dropping the sheaf of papers, and she’s thankful for the heavy clip keeping it together as it crashes to the floor. Her heart jumps at the noise, sure that she’s caught if anyone who isn’t sympathetic is here. That’s it, she’s fired, her friends are in danger…

She’s trying to dive behind the couch when she realizes she knows the lithe frame in the dim doorway.

“Pidge?”

“Lance!” She takes deep breaths as she gathers up the papers and adjusts the clip to tighten it. “What…? What are you doing here?”

“I come over on my own sometimes...are you okay?” He hurries over as if to help her, but there’s nothing else to pick up.

She drops back onto the couch with a heavy breath. “I’m fine. Sorry. Just thought I was alone up here.”

Lance chuckles quietly. “Sorry.”

Pidge waves it off, studying him as he picks up a small handheld game and settles on the other end of the couch she’s half stretched out on.

He could have settled on one of the others, but he didn’t.

...why is she even thinking about it?

Lance blinks and looks up. “Oh, I uh...you don’t mind the company, do you?”

“No! I mean…of course not. The other night was...nice.”

Why did she even bring that up?

“Yeah,” Lance agrees with a smile.

He settles back in his seat, and Pidge scrambles to think of something to break the sudden awkward silence, even if she may be the only one feeling the awkwardness in it. All she comes up with is the bag of snacks beside the couch that she’d brought with her. She brings it up to hold out between them.

“Uh...Popcorn?”

Lance raises an eyebrow at her. “You brought popcorn to a reading binge? Isn’t that a movie thing?”

“Reading is just as good as movies to me.” Pidge blinks at a certain thought. “Please tell me you understand popcorn plus movies because you’ve actually done that though. Because if not, we have to fix that RIGHT now.”

He shrugs as he takes a handful. “Oh yeah, we have movie nights in the dorms. They’ve got to try to keep us happy somehow. They get to pick what we watch, but it’s not awful. And we’ve got screens in our rooms and stuff—again, only approved content you know, but whatever.”

A strange sort of disappointment mingles with the relief. “Oh, good.”

Lance nods to the papers in your hand. “Did you finish the other one?”

Pidge shakes her head sheepishly. “Not exactly...but I saw you reading this one and I was curious. If you’ve read them all and you were reading this one again on purpose it must be interesting.”

He smiles. “It is. It’s more like I just kind of feel a connection with it though, I guess. Most of the journals don’t use names or anything, just to be safe, but I’m pretty sure that one was written by the Proxy who had Veronica’s DNA a couple of generations before us.”

Her eyebrows go up, and she flips back through the pages. “Then the ‘brother’ she’s talking about…”

“Same DNA as me, probably,” Lance shrugs. “We’re not the same people—we know that—but it’s still kind of cool. Like reading about a past life. I kind of wish one of the other ‘me’s had written one himself, but that’s the closest I’ve got.”

Pidge cocks her head at him. “Then why don’t you write one?”

“It’s okay. We’re out of blank notebooks right now, anyway.”

“I could get you one.”

He isn’t quite looking at her as he pulls a foot up onto the couch, the toe of his soft shoe poking absentmindedly at her leg. “It’s okay,” he repeats. He makes an uneasy sound like he’s trying to laugh and it isn’t really working.

“What?” She nudges his leg back with her own. “I bet you’d be good at it.”

“I don’t think anybody wants to hear about ‘my’ life.”

“What about all that trouble Rizavi says you used to get into?” she teases.

That nervous sound again, hidden in a laugh, and Lance just shrugs again and motions to the papers. As much as he clearly wants to change the subject, she lets it go.

“How’s it going?” he asks.

Pidge glances back down at the entry she’d left off with and pokes a finger into the journal pages. “They’re definitely in love with each other. Calling it now.”

Lance just smiles.

“I’m starting to run into things I’m not sure what they’re talking about, though.”

“Like...what?”

Is it just her, or did he tense ever so slightly when he asked?

“Uh…” Her eyes skip over the words again, giving her time to decide whether she should ask anything at all. _Who is the other younger sibling? The other sister? Does she have a counterpart now?_ is what she wants to ask, but suddenly she has a bad feeling about it.

“What’s uh...what’s quarantine?” Pidge asks instead. “That wasn’t in the orientation info…”

Something in Lance seems to relax, even though he winces. “It’s the last year and a half or so before we go on duty. Carer training and stuff, and...you know, we find out what we’re really….for.”

Pidge blinks. “...oh…”

“We can’t see anyone except everybody in our year, and the teachers. There’s a whole part of the tower we can’t leave. Like, when we’re kids we can only see the adult Proxies with supervision because they don’t want them to tell us everything, I guess.”

Because they want to control that, she’s sure.

Lance pulls a knee up close enough to his chest to rest an elbow on it. “There’s already another kid with my DNA, did you know that? He’s five...I get to see him, sometimes.”

He may just want to change the subject, but that catches Pidge off guard.  
“What? How already…?

“All of our patterns are on a 20 year rotation. So any of us over 20 have a younger counterpart already.”

She tries to imagine what a five year old version of Lance might look like, and even though her stomach is still churning, she can’t help smiling at the idea. “What’s his name?”

“Officially? L33. We call him Sylvio.”

“That’s cute.”

Lance perks up a little more at that. “Picked it out myself. He needed to have a good name, you know.” He makes a show of smoothing an unruly patch of hair over his ear. “To go with these looks.”

It’s a relief to drown in a fit of giggles over his posturing; a fit he joins her in, losing his grip on his knee and letting his leg slide out on the couch beside hers.

“So Veronica has one too a little older then, right? What’s her name? Have you met her too?”

Lance leans forward, as if eager to talk about them, almost like a proud parent. “Yeah, we get to see them together sometimes, too. Her name’s Nadia. She loves science, and she can already take a computer apart, if you believe it. And Sylvio tells the best stories…”

They very nearly lose track of time with none of the others there to remind them that they should be leaving before it gets too late. Even then, Lance hesitates with her in the dim corridor before they part. Their flashlight beams bounce around the walls as they shift on their feet.

“So...how often do you come up here?” Pidge asks.

“Usually no more than a couple of times a week...it’s just safer. But I haven’t had any problems with that.” His head tilts thoughtfully. “A little more often couldn’t hurt?”

“If you really think it would be okay…?”

“Day after tomorrow?” he suggests.

Pidge didn’t realize she was up on her toes in anticipation until she settles back on them, relieved and grinning. “Yeah! Sure.”

“Okay! Good. Yeah.”

“Good. I’ll bring more popcorn. Or something.”

Lance laughs, just as she hoped he would.

 _Right now it’s most useful for you just to be there,_ Allura said. This probably isn’t exactly what she meant.

But it feels right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you think! <3


End file.
